I’m delighted to be part of the Team Scilly Project, where I’ll be reviewing all the books in The Isles Of Scilly Mysteries series over the next few months. My review of The Brutal Tide is written with thanks to Tracy Fenton for inviting me to be part of Team Scilly and to Simon & Schuster for my copy of the book.

Blurb:

REVENGE
DI Ben Kitto made many enemies in his time working as an undercover officer for the Met police, none more ruthless and calculating than gang leader Craig Travis.

IS WORTH
Travis has longed to make Kitto pay for his role in getting him convicted – and that day has finally arrived. Now, a dark and twisted killer is heading for the Scilly Isles, one who has waited a long time for revenge.

WAITING FOR . . .
With Kitto busy investigating the discovery of a body on the islands and distracted by the imminent arrival of his first child, his defences are down. He has so much to lose.

And Travis will stop at nothing to take it all from him.

Review:

I’ve really enjoyed all of the Isles Of Scilly Mysteries so far and The Brutal Tide is no different. In this instalment, there are several plots running alongside each other – DI Ben Kitto has to run a murder investigation as well as being under threat from someone from the past. There is so much going on that the novel could easily be over complicated, but that’s not the case at all. I was engrossed in all the different plots and really wanted to know how everything would be wrapped up.

As with the previous books in the series, most of The Brutal Tide is written in first person from DI Ben Kitto’s perspective, but these are interspersed with chapters in the third person from the perspective of another character. In this novel, the character is Ruby, who has a fascinating and well developed back story and I loved following it, especially as the novel fathers pace and the tension rises.

As a detective, DI Ben Kitto has everything I like in a central character. He’s intelligent, determined and compassionate and I’ve enjoyed how his relationships with both his fellow officers and the residents of the Isles Of Scilly have developed over the series. We catch up with him in The Brutal Tide at a critical time in his life and it was great to continue following his story.

The plotting in The Brutal Tide is quite complex, and it was interesting for me to try and work out who was involved in the crimes that DI Ben Kitto was investigating. As the island is so small, almost everyone is a suspect and this makes it almost impossible to guess but when it all begins to come together, the story gripped me even more and it was difficult to turn myself away.

I can’t wait to see where the series goes next!

The Brutal Tide is available from Amazon.